Satellite communication networks are increasingly being used for communicating a variety of different kinds of signals including voice, data, video and audio between remote locations. Such networks may transmit signals synchronously in order to support conversations or video teleconferences or asynchronously for transmitting data, for example inventory and sales information between sales outlets and a headquarters or warehouse depot. In many applications, the ground stations transmit signals to each other in the form of bursts. Receiving stations must be able to tune to these bursts almost instantly despite offsets and drift introduced by the ground stations, the satellite and the environment. In order to compensate for these offsets and drifts, specific tuning or pilot signals are sometimes used. These signals are transmitted continuously at a known frequency by a control station as a reference allowing each of the ground stations to track transmissions from other stations using the reference. The pilot signal, however, consumes bandwidth that might otherwise be used for communications and requires that ground station resources be dedicated to tuning to the pilot signal. An alternative approach is to ignore the offsets and drifts. The receiving station can simply attempt to lock onto any signals that are close to the assigned receive frequency. However, this technique introduces delays and errors in the reception of the signals. In addition, the transmitted bursts must be long enough to allow time for tuning and the modem at each receiving station must have a great enough frequency range to allow the disparate signals to be captured. This reduces the precision or increases the cost of the modem.